[PEN-L:30247] Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Reply to Marc Cooper

[Mark Jones <markjones011@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 13/09/2002 23:50, you wrote:
> Michael Perelman wrote:
>
> > Maybe that is why he pisses me off.  He does sometimes do interesting
> > journalism, but on some issues he is so far off that he gets my anger up.
> > Very few people can do that to me.
>
> Sorry to sound like a shrink, but maybe that's a sign worth interpreting.
> Why does he get you so angry? It might be about ambivalence or
> defensiveness or the sense that maybe he has a point that you'd rather not
> consider. I doubt Alterman makes you mad in the same way.
>
> Doug
>
> PS: One of the funniest columns ever written was this account of a Marc
> Cooper book party.

Anger is prophylactic, cathartic and therapeutic. Michael Perelman, who is
in California after all, is not as angry as he ought to be, but that is
much better than being seemingly cool and slick, but full of
barely-suppressed rage, and in embarrassingly-visible denial. Perelman
definitely has real cool. That is the difference.

If a person really thinks Marc Cooper has a point, than he better say it
out loud. Suppressed rage is just SO American, and so boring. If you think
the world hates you because you are good, why be afraid to say so? Better
get it out in the open, so that the world can show auscultation rather than
fear, and so that your pathological symptoms can get help at last.

Mark